IGBT

I recently got to see some of these insite of a "small" DC to AC inverter turning a solar array into AC power. (50kw worth) The engineer forgot what the official name was and emailed me today with this link and a description.

I'm impressed by his follow-thru, to a casual question during a tour, as well as the device. Now I want to use some somewhere... build my own electric car controlling circuits or lightning creator..

and for some reason, I get different connotations when I see the abbreviation IGBT.

Oh, hey! I've used one of these things to control an array of halogen lights. I was working with an artist who made a big sculpture of a geode, and he wanted it to glow with a pulse like the MacBook sleep light. I used an AVR to PWM the control line on a big fat SSR, which is basically an IGBT in a fancy case with screw-terminals. Worked great. It was hard to believe it was really that simple.

I have a temporarily shelved project to convert a motorcycle to run on battery power - I've been assuming I'd get an Alltrax AXE7245 to control the motor, but if it's just an even bigger IGBT inside, maybe I can do that myself...

I would love to build an electric car controller. And I still wanna replace the Atmel AVR controlling relays Christmas light controller I built a few years ago with a similar driving TRIACs that can do brightness modulation, for fade-in and out and lower overall intensity...